[squeak-dev] Re: Squeak relisencing,
Croquet consortium already did it...
Andreas Raab
andreas.raab at gmx.de
Tue Mar 25 04:16:53 UTC 2008
Hilaire Fernandes wrote:
> From the Croquet welcome page we can read:
>
> http://www.opencroquet.org/index.php/Main_Page
>
> "Croquet is a powerful new open source software development environment
> and software infrastructure for creating and deploying deeply
> collaborative multi-user online applications and metaverses on and
> across multiple operating systems and devices. Derived from Squeak, it
> features a peer-based network architecture that supports communication,
> collaboration, resource sharing, and synchronous computation between
> multiple users on multiple devices."
>
> Interesting part is: "Croquet is derived from Squeak"
You should realize that the above is marketing, not legal speak.
> Then Croquet license is pretty clear
> http://www.opencroquet.org/index.php/The_Croquet_License
>
> According to this information, Squeak has already been relicensed since
> 2002. Or is it a violation of the copyright laws?
No, it's just a misinterpretation. Croquet is an SDK (a library) and
only preloaded in those images for convenience. You can just take the
Homebase.image and load whichever combination of Croquet packages you
like (this is the very reason why it's there). But it changes nothing
about the license of the code in Homebase.image which for the most part
is Squeak-L (until the point where we can get a clean heritage to change
it to MIT).
> Anyway 6 years without a legal suit and even Intel, business angel
> investing money on this technology.
>
> Any though on that...
To my knowledge there has never been a problem with Squeak-L in
commercial settings. All of my last four companies used Squeak under
Squeak-L for commercial products and that includes both huge places like
Disney (which is known for its notorious interpretations of IP and
copyright) and HP, as well as small places like Impara or Qwaq.
It's only the uber-freedom guys (Debian etc) who have a problem with
Squeak-L; in commercial settings Squeak-L is quite acceptable.
Cheers,
- Andreas
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